Hockey 24

[Frank Cox]

First movie I've watched in my theatre in months. Yay!

This is a documentary looking at one day of community hockey across Canada. It's actually a pretty decent movie, with a lot of nice feel good stuff in it. I was wondering if they would include anything from Melville since this is a big hockey town, but the only Saskatchewan rinks in it are in Wilkie and Emerald Park. Oh well. It's still fun and it's just a nice movie that the whole family can watch and nobody will be offended.

They cover community hockey for everyone from the tiniest little kids who can barely hold a hockey stick, up to the Senior Ladies Hockey League (for ladies 50 and over). Some of the footage of the senior ladies game had the fans in the stands yelling "Go Grandma! Go get 'em!" One tiny little girl said, "Nobody plays hockey better than my granny!"

Anyway, it's cute and it's fun and it's a nice way to spend 90 minutes and see some of Canada on the movie screen. Lots of Tim Hortons coffee cups in this one.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Sounds like something that might mildly resonate with the Canadian audience, but I can't really imagine playing it over here, if it gets a release here anyway.

It's still pretty hard to fill a cinema with documentaries, I think it's something people expect to get "for free" on TV or YouTube nowadays, not something you watch in a theater. Would be interesting to hear from you what it's doing, crowd-wise.

You're not going to play some more or less classic releases to fill in the gaps?

[Frank Cox]

I'm not actually playing Hockey 24 until this coming Friday, so we'll see what happens then.

Right now I'm playing Trolls World Tour and it's not doing much. After Hockey 24 I'll play Bloodshot and then after that I'm still undecided. Frankly, I don't really know what to play. "Everyone" told me that they wanted a kids show so I got Trolls, and there's not much to be had there. There's really no way to know what will sell here these days, I guess.

Sigh..

At least I've got my theatre open again so my life can go back to something approaching normal.

[Marcel Birgelen]

From what I've heard, a bunch of theaters re-running the entire Harry Potter series two weeks in a row around here, actually did some decent business. Many kids showing up with at least one of their parents. Apparently, there were quite a few that showed up for every one of them. I don't exactly know what their deal with the studio was though, I can imagine this being too much of a risk for a single screen, especially if they demand a lump sum for the privilege.

[Frank Cox]

For the first two days of this movie (Friday and Saturday) I have had a grand total of exactly zero customers.

I don't recall this ever happening before where I had nobody on both a Friday and a Saturday.

Trolls World Tour wasn't exactly a big screaming deal, either, though it did get at least some customers.

If all theatres are having this sort of a turn-out, it really makes me wonder about the survival of the theatre industry. I have seen a lot of slow patches before, but this seems to be getting to new levels altogether.

Maybe we can all wake up one day and have everything back to normal.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I'm not in charge of your business, but if I may be so blunt, I really think you should get some classics in. From what I've seen around here is that they at least draw some crowds, granted, some more than others, but it's the life-line they're currently depending on. You should also consider running more than one movie a week, maybe even if some current engagements don't allow you to do so. I don't think any studio right now will really mind you doing so, as they're having not such a great time either.

Studios keep kicking the can down the road for their major releases. While Nolan was so bold to announce he would release his "summer blockbuster" on the original opening date, the release has now been postponed twice. Since almost no new movies are being made, the situation will persist for a while.

Also, there are a lot of stupid (and/or corrupt) people in the world, unfortunately, quite a few make it up to the ranks and become part of our collective governments. They keep on screwing up stuff, so right now, despite all "reopenings", we're not even done yet with he first wave...

You know your own public the best, so I'd really see if I'd get some classics that likely would resonate with them.

[Frank Cox]

This week's movie just wasn't meant to be, apparently. Friday and Saturday, nobody came. Tonight (Sunday) about ten minutes before I was about to unlock the front door, the sky got dark and a huge thunderstorm started. Then my phone started jumping around with a "Incoming tornado, everyone take cover" warning.

I haven't seen any tornado (yet) but it's raining like the starting gun for Noah's Ark and I just put a sign on the door saying "Closed due to tornado warning".

Sheesh.